


Something More Than This

by Tabithian



Series: The Spaces Between [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 20:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4363970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Tim were a better person, he would have given the others a warning, some kind of heads up.</p><p>But.</p><p>To be honest though, they brought this upon themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something More Than This

**Author's Note:**

> Expanded version of comment fic [found here](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/33169926). 
> 
> *hands*

If Tim were a better person, he would have given the others a warning, some kind of heads up.

But.

To be honest though, they brought this upon themselves.

********

“What.”

Tim looks over to see Dick staring at Jason. More specifically, at Jason's neck.

“Problem?”

The urge to face palm is strong, but tempered by the fact that Tim is currently defusing a small bomb. 

Nothing to worry about here, but maybe Jason and Dick would like to take this elsewhere? Let Tim concentrate and all that.

“You, uh,” Dick says, leaning in a little for a better look, gestures at his own neck with a flutter of his fingers. “You have something there.”

Tim's going to take that as a _no, they will not_ , and does his best to ignore them because _bomb_.

The collar of Jason's jacket does a good job of hiding most of it, but there's undeniably something pink and sparkly around his throat.

“You like?” Jason asks. “It was a present.”

There's a long moment of silence while Tim debates cutting the red wire or the blue, and Dick stares at Jason while the jerk preens, fingers running over the collar.

“I.”

“Hmm?”

More staring, just. More staring.

Tim takes a deep breath and cuts the blue wire. 

The countdown stutters before speeding up, so Tim cuts the red wire. And then, just for fun when that does nothing, he goes after the yellow one and the black one buried under the others.

He can see Dick struggling to say something, Jason's head cocked just so, and also - 

“Hey, so,” Tim pipes up, “there was no right wire.”

Because of course there wouldn't be. Why make a bomb someone could defuse when you could just blow everything up willy nilly?

Jason and Dick turn to him as one. 

“What?”

“Tim?”

“Running would be good,” Tim says, already on his feet and moving. 

His conscience makes him give Jason and Dick a shove in the right direction, but after that it's every man for himself.

********

“Well,” Jason says, watching the warehouse burn. “That was awesome.”

Tim rolls his eyes, brushes off little bits of ash off his shoulder. 

“Huh,” Dick says, face a few inches from Jason's neck. “Huh.”

Jason looks at him, waiting.

Dick keeps staring, tilting his way one way and the other as though that's going to help him make sense of this.

“You should probably go tell Bruce we didn't die?” Tim prods.

Small bomb plus three former Robins equals Bruce not being a happy camper for various reasons, and only one is tied to property damage.

Dick looks at him, corner of his mouth twitching. “That would be good, yeah.”

There's a question on his face, and Tim just shrugs because hell if he knows what Jason's doing.

“Try not to blow anything else up, okay?” Dick says, and then he's making a running leap for the edge of the roof because he's Dick and that's something he does.

“Idiot,” Jason mutters, and Tim doesn't completely disagree.

********

They still have patrol to finish, bomb explosion or no, which of course is why they keep running into the others.

Steph and a hard punch to Tim's shoulder at just the right point where the armor's weakest and, _Don't scare me like that, you jerk!_ and convulsive laughter and, _Wait, hold on, I need to get a picture of this. For great justice!_ when she'd gotten a good look as Jason and his newest fashion accessory.

Cass and the overall amusement she was radiating, fingers ghosting over Jason's collar while he stood still and almost definitely smirked at her. (A punch to Tim's other shoulder, and why he gets all the abuse, he'll never know.)

Dick again, because who even knows, this time dragging Damian behind.

A sneer and the insults he always has in abundance for Tim and his lack of skill in defusing such a small bomb, not even made by one of Gotham's more memorable villains, so disgraceful, Drake.

More sneering for the collar around Jason's throat and Dick covering Damian's mouth with his hands before he could say anything that would get him tossed off the roof by Jason, if not worse.

And of course, of course - 

“Hood.”

Tim sidles a little more into the small patch of shadows on the roof they're standing on, as though Bruce won't notice.

"Hey, thanks for the gift," Jason says, flicks his fingers against the collar. "Very sparkly. Nice."

Bruce turns to look at Tim who just holds his hands up because he had no part in this – or, okay, no. He may have started things rolling by referring to Jason as a stray, but this right now, this is all Jason.

Bruce grumbles, turns to pin Jason with a _look_.

Jason, though.

Jason's smirking at Bruce, and they're lucky Bruce is still _concerned_ about the explosion because after a long moment he sighs, long and drawn out.

“Er,” Tim says, goes quiet when Bruce looks at him.

There's.

There's the tiniest hint of a smile there, and not like the usual tiny smiles Bruce has. This one.

“Please, no,” Tim says, because that is a bad smile. Bad, bad, bad.

The smile gets a little wider and Tim takes a step back, _because_.

“I hope you have a good explanation for that,” Bruce angles his head in the direction of the earlier explosion, “to give to Alfred.”

And the he's gone, leaving fear and terror in his wake as per usual.

********

Tim's.

It's probably just paranoia at this point, but.

Bruce hasn't said or done anything, and he just looks so, so amused whenever he sees Tim.

That horrible, tiny smile of his and general pleasantness, whether he's being Bruce or Brucie or Batman, and.

“What is it?” Jason asks, when Tim flings the package at him. Faster it's out of his hands the better.

“I don't want to know,” Tim says. “Whatever this is, leave me out of it.”

As if he really thinks that will work, but it's worth a try.

Jason rolls his eyes and stares at the brown-paper wrapped box with its plain white shipping label. 

Printed, so there's no handwriting to match, but if he has a few days Tim could probably figure out the make and model of the printer used, track it through warehouse manifests and purchasing records.

“You're a freak,” Jason says, watching him. “Seriously, how bad could it be?”

Tim.

Tim throws his hands up and walks away because everyone is stupid, but none more so than the idiot who asks something like that.

********

Things haven't quite gotten to the point where Tim's set up a modified murder board (Jason's term, because face it, most of the time that's what they turn out to be in Gotham) to find out which member of his so-called family is behind this, but it's close.

“What do you think?”

And there's Jason modeling his newest accessory, a pet tag in the shape of the bat on his chest and engraved with _If lost, please return to Tim Drake_ along with the pertinent contact information.

Because yes, please connect Red Hood with Tim's civilian identity, nothing could possibly go wrong there.

“I hate all of you,” Tim says, defeated.

********

Jason.

He gets irritated, impossible, whenever he gets blood on the collar. 

Whether it's his own because he doesn't watch his back nearly as well as he should when Tim's not there, or some unlucky thug's, out breaking laws and forgetting which city he's currently in. (And how bad of an idea it was for him to rob that bank or mug this woman.)

He gets irritated and that irritates Tim, has him looking online and typing in search inquiries like _How to get bloodstains out of pet collar?_ and then when he realizes how that sounds, hastily adds, _I'm asking for a friend, no animals were hurt._ because there, fixed. 

Not at all suspicious.

No.

Normal people ask things like that all the time. 

Really.

Tim closes the browser and turns the laptop off, stares at the darkened screen and wonders what he ever did for things like this to happen in his life. 

And there's Jason slamming cabinet doors and letting everyone in hearing range know he's not happy and Tim.

Tim sighs and sucks it up, picks up his phone to call Alfred because the man is magic, and will probably know how to help.

********

“I must say,” Alfred does say, “this is not the strangest thing I've had to deal with when it comes to this family.”

Tim.

He's horribly tempted to ask him what the strangest thing is, but. Well. 

_No_.

********

Being a Titan is one of those forever things Tim is learning to trust, which means there are times he has to leave Gotham to help fight evil elsewhere.

San Francisco present day or in the future (never again, please), or somewhere else exciting and filled with people who probably want the Titans super, super dead.

The thing is, when he's gone Jason gets into trouble. 

Or, no.

Jason's a Bat, no matter how strongly he'll argue otherwise, and they all have a tendency to attract trouble of varying levels of difficulty.

It's just that when Tim's there to watch his back, Jason's less likely to end up bleeding from some new injury, and that's always a plus. 

********

“Hey, Timmy, guess what I found?”

Tim isn't jet lagged so much as time lagged - he'd asked nicely, but no, they'd still gotten thrown into the future and apparently he's still evil there, very reassuring - and.

And there's Dick crouched on the windowsill, big, big smile on his face.

“What did you do?” Tim asks, first thing to pop into his head when faced with that look on Dick's face.

“Hey, now,” Dick says, pulls an injured face. “Is that any way to talk to your favorite big brother?”

Tim stares at him.

“Okay, okay, fine, geeze,” Dick says, and ducks back out of the window to - 

"What did you _do_?"

Because Dick is dragging Jason through the window.

An unconscious Jason with dark bruising on his jaw and little flecks of dried blood.

“He's fine,” Dick reassures, when he sees Tim's face. “Some punk got in a lucky hit.”

That explains the bruising, but - 

“We were trying to stop them from using some kind of gas,” Dick says, like that's not worrying at all, given Gotham. “Bruce can give you the details.”

Right. Like Dick doesn't know them by heart himself at this point.

“Jason's going to be fine,” Dick says, looking Tim in the eye because he actually is a good big brother and he knows Tim. “He's okay, he just needs to sleep it off.”

Tim sighs, and follows Dick to the bedroom, watches as he carefully lowers Jason onto the bed, fond little smile on his face as he looks down at him, because.

And then - 

“It's good thing he was wearing that,” Dick says, taps the pet tag hanging from Jason's collar before looking up at Tim. “Otherwise I never would have known where to take him.”

He's smirking, enjoying Tim's wordless frustration, irritation, and Tim takes it back. Dick is a terrible, terrible big brother.

The absolute worst.

********

Jason is yelling at Dick and trying to trip him up with creative use of his grapple and the surrounding environment, and Dick is laughing and taunting him and this will not end well.

Tim sighs, and looks up at Bruce.

“I'm thinking of having him micro-chipped,” he says, because.

Because things keep happening to Jason and one of the others keep bringing him back to Tim's apartment, more often than not unconscious. (And then there are the times he disappears and no one can find him and Tim predicts he's in for ulcers sometime soon.)

Bruce makes a noncommittal noise.

A moment later he _smiles_.

“Now you know how I feel,” Bruce says, which.

Okay, fair point, but - 

Wait.

He wouldn't, would he?

But Bruce has that _smile_ on his face, and suddenly Tim isn't so sure about that. 

Who is he even trying to kid? This is Bruce. Of course he'd do something like that.

“Did you ever - “ Tim starts to ask, but Bruce is _gone_.

“Oh, well then,” Tim says, makes a mental note to do some scans on himself because _Bruce_. “Okay then.”


End file.
